Thursday, May 31, 2012

Happy Birthday, Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

Walt Whitman

Today is the birth date of Walt Whitman, poet. He was born in Huntington, Long Island in 1819 and is remembered today as the most American of poets. His magnum opus: the expansive and emotion-rich LEAVES OF GRASS, which he went on revising and editing until the end of his life.

The literary critic, Harold Bloom wrote, as the introduction for the 150th anniversary edition of LEAVES OF GRASS:

If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself you have never composed a line of verse. You can nominate a fair number of works as candidates for the Secular scripture of the United States. They might include Melville's MOBY DICK, Twain's ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, and Emerson's two series of essays and THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. None of those, not even Emerson's, are as central as the first edition of LEAVES OF GRASS.

************************

CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY

1

Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face;

Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!

On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations than you might suppose.

2

The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day;

I grew up with this book on my parents' shelves for my entire childhood. It was always there, always ready to be opened.

Unfortunately, when I packed up my mother's apartment four years ago, it wasn't among her books.

Maybe I should get a copy.

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry came to my attention 6 or 7 years ago when a friend read excerpts of it at a memorial for a friend of ours, a wonderful woman, who passed away at the age of 54 from breast cancer.